


Compatible

by smokefall



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Childhood Memories, F/F, Healing Through Giant Mecha Piloting?, Jaeger Pilots, The Drift (Pacific Rim)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-31
Updated: 2013-07-31
Packaged: 2017-12-21 23:43:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/906356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smokefall/pseuds/smokefall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cosette and Eponine pilot a Jaeger, with all the headfuckery that implies.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Compatible

There is a hiss of air as her helmet seals, vision blanked out and then sliding back as the relay fluid drains from her visor. The pulse of machinery, ambient and huge a moment ago, is on her skin now; she is a node in its system, but more than that too. She is half a mind, waiting for the other.

She feels it in her spine before it reaches her brain, sparking upwards, like nerves before a kiss but calmer and so much more urgent all at once; with a bloom of light it envelops her mind and the world is narrowing down to a point as a voice from across the cockpit (which echoes on itself, already in her thoughts before it’s relayed by her ears) says: ‘We got this, Cosette.’

She hears the Jaeger A.I. announce _initiating neural handshake_ but she’s already far away, memories bubbling into view and nearly eclipsing her awareness of all else - but only nearly, because she holds herself barely a whisper away from them; she can look them in the eye now, but she won’t, can’t let herself be swept away on them - even when

\- when she is too young to speak, hardly to know or think anything, and her new playmate is pulling her hair but only softly, laughing -

(- when she is too young to speak, hardly to know or think anything, and her new playmate's hair is so soft and bright and she can't help but grab at it -)

\- when she is old enough to speak and think and know, but hardly dares, when Madame is screaming at her and Eponine calling her out into the yard only to trip her sprawling, to make ‘Zelma laugh -

(- when Eponine is listening to 'Zelma laugh through a mixed sense of triumph and contempt and regret -)

\- when it’s a frozen Christams Eve and she knows she won’t get the shining toys that her not-sisters will but she puts out her shoe for Père Noël anyway because, after all, you never know -

(- when it's a frozen Christmas morning and her shining toys are no compensation for Cosette being suddenly _gone_ -)

\- when she is happy and grown and she sees Eponine again in the street, wretched and shrunk -

(- when she sees Cosette in the street, and in a moment is hungry for something far more than bread -)

\- when her Father is dying and her husband is useless and the world is being swarmed by monsters - 

\- there’s no time, and no point to letting herself stop and feel it. This is the crux of the matter: that she and Eponine both flash through the same moments from opposite ends of experience, and there may be pain and there may be sharp, unanswered (and, maybe, unanswerable) questions all mixed up in there, but it doesn’t - can’t - lessen the crackling lines of awareness between them, the searing strength of their oneness in the Drift.

_Right hemisphere calibrated._

There’s a magnetism to the fear and misery of those nights, a siren sorrow in two voices, each deepend by the other - long gone in the cold light of reality but sharp and clinging in memory - easy to dismiss when you’re not connected, _hah, don’t follow the rabbit_ \- but here, so much harder to distinguish what’s now and what’s then, what’s healed and what’s raw -

_Left hemisphere calibrated._

‘Cosette!’ she hears, again the strange echo, her ears catching up with her brain. This is only their second time, and the first was a mess of memory and jolting machinery and terrified crying, but there’s no time, there’s a Jaeger down, out there, and they need to be _moving_ already -

And the tumble of images is just that - images - but the voice is there and real, inside and outside of herself, and she locks her focus onto that -

 _Drift complete_ , intones the A.I.

Cosette can’t see Eponine’s grin, but she knows it’s there.

‘Shall we go spoil that Kaiju’s day?’ she shouts.

‘Let’s,’ Eponine replies, and together they stride the _Alouette_ into the sunset.


End file.
